A Witch and Her Garden.

The garden has been neglected for weeks. I admire the rose, the hibiscus with blooms as big as my outstretched hand, the Oregano That Ate The World, the little balloon flowers. But I haven't weeded or pruned or tended in far too long.

Husband didn't work today, due  to the ridiculous storms this morning, so the chores aren't all on me today. I do need to get a few dinner things. I do need to find out where the hell all my work-appropriate t-shirts have gone.

But.

I need to go outside, stick my hands on soil, get dirty. Remind myself that this job and the lousy commute and living in the Trailer Park of the Dammned won't last forever.

Outside, witch.

Wherein The Ocelot Accomplishes A Bunch Of Stuff.

Work done: 8 hours.

Horse fed twice.

Dinner made, if somewhat disappointing.

Laundry done: two loads, including folding.

Sigil making explained to the Husband.

A divinatory spread and personal symbols made and explained: one.

Maybe the immediate, almost spontaneous creation of the last is due to the owls I heard this morning while out with the dog. They are not barred owls. I am hoping they stick around and that I can see them, but hearing them is still good. I've missed owls.

And now, to a well-earned rest while "The Wicker Man" plays in the background.

The Wren - Le Fin.

Saturday night, the Husband and I went outside to take a look at the garden. The first thing that struck me was that those fucking coyote-piss granules are not a deer repellent - they are a deer condiment.

Then I realized the wren was gone. The wren whom the ants had so obligingly found again, and started to consume. With not a track left or a single feather dropped. Just...poof.

This Land is ridiculous.

The Wren.

I got home tonight around four, grabbed the dog and went outside, only to find a dead wren on the patio. It's near a window, so I'm sure the poor bird took a fatal header into it, as they are sometimes wont to do.

The dog was very interested in this. He was very disappointed that I did not allow him to snack on our departed friend. The wren stayed where it was while I pondered this (a dead wren on the porch, not letting the dog eat it. Ew.).

The Husband came home, we came outside, and I showed him the poor little bird, already being eaten by ants. "We'll have to put him in the woods," he said. "Um..." I said. The Husband, knowing me rather well by this point, knew where this was going.

"You want to keep the bones, don't you." Notice there is no question mark there.

"I was thinking of sticking the wren on an anthill," I said, and we went inside to gather my things for tonight's riding lesson.

I came back. The wren was still there. I did a few things around the house, got in bed with the Husband for a bit, and then...came out here to put the wren in an opportune place next to the garden.

What really happened looks like some kind of Hogwarts math class:

If a witch (W) wants, after sex with her Husband (Sex and Death, anyone?), to don a bathrobe and head out to the dead wren (DW)with the intent of putting it on an anthill (A) without attracting attention from her housemates (H1,2), which means no flashlight (F), but also doesn't want to get bitten by the ants already consuming DW, how does she do it?

Quickly. And carefully.

W is unbitten, H1 & 2 seem none the wiser, and DW is now in the garden. I talked to it, apologizing for the windows and wishing it a nice sojourn in the Summerlands/a good next incarnation, and explaining what I'd like to do with its bones once they're clean.

So help me, if I see that single row of teethmarks in it tomorrow, I am having a ton of salt delivered to this place. Because it does occur to me that while I've seen bluebirds, woodpeckers, hawks, crows, cardinals, mockingbirds, and sparrows aplenty, I haven't seen or heard a single wren since we moved in.

The Land, Redux.

Husband and I will be looking for our own place in a few months - say, around March. We will probably not get a place with land.

The idea of moving into some just-off-the-highway rent-a-box with no woods around or near it makes me grieve. For years, now, I've lived in actual houses, mostly suburbs with a decent amount of flora and fauna. But I suspect that wherever we end up, there will be no raccoons in the yard, no owls in the trees, no Land. No more watching the stars fade out after sending the Husband off to work.

I keep praying for a trailer on some land where I can keep the horse and my dog; a little patch that we can rent from decent landlords where I can garden and engage in the kind of outdoor witchery that I'm accustomed to, i.e., the kind that isn't well-suited to a little patio in full view of the neighbors. Maybe a rent-to-own.

I keep telling myself that the Husband said, just a few days ago, that I have proven myself to be very resourceful. If I am, then surely the Gods are even moreso, and They see what I do not.

I keep going, no matter how much I want to jump up and down, shaking my fists at the sky, yelling, "WHAT EXACTLY AM I SUPPOSED TO LEARN BY BEING 41, IMPOVERISHED, DRAGGING THE POOR HUSBAND WITH ME THROUGH ALL THIS, AND GETTING THE SLATS KNOCKED BACK OUT FROM UNDER ME EVERY TIME I THINK IT'S FINALLY OK TO RELAX AND FEEL SAFE? HUH? I WANT ANSWERS, DAMMNIT!!!"

Time to spend some of this weekend at the altar, I think. There are answers, and I need to find out what they are.

Weather Report.

Time: Very early or very late. Otherwise known as 6:30am.

Conditions: Cool, humid. Expect passing bugs and occasional Samahin preparation-frenzy.

Music: The daytime birds woke and sang just as Orion faded away in the creeping daylight, while a barred owl hooted its goodnight/goodmorning.

Forecast: Riding lesson, cleaning, horse tending, Samhain preparations, employer-enspelling*, vegan chili-making.

In other news, the wren seems to have gone elsewhere. I've checked its roost on the front porch, and it hasn't been there for several days. I do miss seeing that little ball of feathers. I wish it well, and am pondering whether it gave me something or came to take away something I didn't need. Maybe it did both. Maybe it was just a bird.

Yeah, right.


*One of my employers isn't really treating one of its horses terribly well. While I can't afford to lose my job over it by saying too much directly, I sure as hell can bring it to the attention of those who are In Charge Of Such Things and toss some heavy witchery at the situation.

The Land.

"...'Traditional Pagans' will often feel connected to a place on the land through which they experience the sacred, become attached to that place and assume the roles of guardians of it. They try to stay warm and close to it. This is a common tendency, and an ancient one." - Robin Artisson, Becoming A Traditional Witch

I miss The Land.

The Land here at the new place is very welcoming. The Front Meadow, the backyard, the star jasmine and the gardenia hedge up the walk, the azalea and the heirloom ivy all welcome me. I don't think I've felt such oneness with a piece of land in years. When I introduced myself to it more formally a weekend or so ago, a feeling of familial love came from it.  I/we know you, and you know me/us. We will care for one another. And thanks for leaving those salmon skins out for the raccoons, it said. 

I still miss the land I was forced to leave. I miss my willow tree (I rescued & replanted it from an inappropriately dry patch of the front yard, and it rewarded me by turning from a foot-high sapling to a 20-foot giant in four years), my turk's-cap, my lemon bush (which was actually bearing fruit this year), my tiny rosemary (who will water you now?), and my clematis. I miss the spirits of the Land that I didn't even have time to say goodbye to.

I know this Land and I will be together for at least a year, and that I will be back here to visit and cat-sit after the Husband and I move out. I will grow new plants and give offerings to the animals and spirits. I love it, and it loves me. The more I spend time with it, the sooner I'll heal from the loss of the other Land.

Wren and Toad

Last night, after dinner was made and the kitchen cleaned, I started gathering up my things to go cleanse my and the Husband's room. Well, cleanse and make mine/ours, since Big Brother Housemate has this place so spiritually sparkly that it's like a magical fallout shelter.

I couldn't find my cauldron. I realized I had no charcoal. I was rooting through boxes like a crazed squirrel and getting more frustrated by the moment. Husband suggested that I put it off until the next day. But I was driven to do what I'd set out to, and nothing short of having all the damn boxes fall out of the closet on top of me was going to stop me. So I found Big Brother and got the necessary supplies, then stepped out on the front porch to smoke, listen to the rain, and get in the right headspace.

The wren was there again.

See, the front porch has these square, slender columns, and this wren has been sleeping up at the top of one of them, on a ledge just big enough for it, for a few weeks now. When we go out to smoke, it doesn't wake and fly away. I was worried at first that it was a stranded fledgling, but it leaves during the day and then comes back. It is clearly able to fly. And it keeps coming back, making a little puffball of feathers up there until morning.

That little bird makes me happy, roosting up there, obviously feeling safe enough to sleep through us coming in and out. I sat down in the chair I've dragged outside, and leaned over to sit my drink down next to me. I startled hell out of a Gulf Coast Toad, but he didn't hop off. So I moved my drink a little, and shared space peacefully with bird and toad.

When the five minutes before ritual is full of soft rain and wild creatures, you know it's going to be good. Maybe not special-effects-like-in-"The Craft" good, definitely not can't-get-grounded-for-hours good, but a deep, soul-restoring kind of good that hums along in the background.

I slept like a baby. Or maybe like a wren.

Reverence the Gods and Ride the Horse.

I'm playing the "Slinger's Theme" from the "Bastion" game and dreaming of riding.

I'm remembering being much younger and fearless and thinking that all feminists should not only ride, but teach other and especially younger women to ride. One of my little girl students trotted without me for the first time tonight, and she didn't turn a girl's face to me when she was done. She looked down at me with the face of a woman who's tasted power for the first time. Slainte and hail Epona, girl.

A woman who loves horses gets up and leaves the house like a wraith. A woman who loves horses doesn't care who might be looking for her when they get up - she left a note on the fridge or the coffeemaker (before there was texting, or texts, now). A woman who loves horses shivers in the cold dawn in the winter and sweats in the first rays of the sun in summer. Riding English or Western, a woman who loves horses is competent. She deals with a crisis, getting help when there is some and dealing as best she can when there isn't (walking through the pasture today, rope around one horse and my t-shirt through the halter of the other, hoping my little-girl student will learn something about women and horses by watching my trek back, wearing only a sports bra and breeches, mud up to the ankles, closing the fence back up).

I say my prayers to Epona every time my students mount. I say my prayers when I put my equine charges back in the pasture and give them their well-deserved dinners. I thank her for this time, for however long it lasts, in which I am teaching other women, no matter their age, to ride and love the horse.

Tomorrow. Up with the sun and out like a breath. I do not know how many more rides I get, but I intend to make them all count. Hail Epona, slainte Epona, go raibh maith agat Epona. Lady of the Horses, bless me and them, and let us all run safe in the pasture.

This is what you want....

(the title's from PiL, for those of you not from the Paleolithic Era. Public Image Limited, for those still wondering what I'm on about now.)

Second Husband and I headed off to the woods for a few days. I needed some serious peace and quiet. We left on Monday, got to our destination around 2pm, hung out, ate, slept, got up, ate, he fished, ate some more, then sat around the fire until he got the Impending Doom sensation that drove us to suddenly break camp and stuff the damn huge tent that suddenly thought it was a frigging Macy's Thanksgiving parade float into the van and flee with decorous but hasty steps into the night.

I got a little over 24 hours of the peace and quiet I was after. It wasn't enough, and it's my own fault.

See, I got talked/talked myself into car camping. I fell prey to the lure of a fire ring, a nearby toilet with lights and whatnot, the van being only ten feet away and chock full o'conveniences, even if the price to pay was Other People. I told myself it was better than the Place By the Lake With Coytoes, which has no lights, no toilet, no parking near the tent, no fire ring and no Other People. It'd be better to camp less wildly this time, I told myself. Maybe next time.

Then Second Husband got the Doom and we came home early anyway. We came home to cats causing chaos (including barfing, shitting inappropriately, tossing litterboxes over, and various and other annoying behaviors, causing me to stare at the lot of them and intone, like Prachett's Death, ADULTS DON'T LIVE LIKE THIS Y'KNOW AND THERE ARE TOO MANY OF YOU SO I THINK YOUSE HAD BETTER FLY RIGHT LEST I MAKE GLOVES FOR FREYA OUT OF THE WORST OFFENDERS).

Oh, and I quit smoking. I hate it and I don't care, which is weird.

I've been tired and blah since we got back and I think it's because I didn't get what I really wanted - the coyotes singing me to sleep, the fear of the deer running through the tent in the pitch black, the half-mile hike to the site. The lack of potable water. The lack of any lights. The lack of any sanitary facilities. The lack of any human being I didn't bring with me.


Like Bruce Willis in Pulp Fiction, I didn't emphasize the importance of the kangaroo; hence, here I am getting twitchy again because three of us in one 10 x 12 room is just a little. TOO. CLOSE. This leads to thoughts like the following:

FIRST HUSBAND: It's the full moon tonight. We should do something.
ME: Uh-huh.
F.H.: Not, maybe, the full, high-church thing. But something.
ME: (Why, yes, what a lovely idea. I think I'll find some belladonna and an unbaptized baby or nibble the neighbor's datura and then I'll be butt-naked up the front tree except for my combat boots and a metal colander on my head, screaming at the moon and calling to the owls) Uh-huh.

I'm not sure why they put up with me, or why I haven't made a burrow in the pool cabana, really.

New Year, New You - Prompt, "Maps"; an Update.

I went to the woods. Later than I'd have liked, and due to a hard hide on Saturday morning, not where I might have liked, exactly. But First Husband found me a good place, and he and Second Husband and I all went into the woods for my Silent Time.

There were wrens. Scolding and fluttering as the dusk came, flitting around the exposed roots of the trees over the little dry-now creek where I sat. One bat, high up, chasing bugs. I didn't sit long - I didn't need to. I got told exactly what I thought I would; come back to us more often. We miss you. You need this. 


I do. And despite dogs and cats and horse and broken plumbing/fridges and friends who need an awful lot of help awfully frequently (there's going to be some unpleasantness about how often I'm available to drive people 100+ miles round-trip for doctors' appointments in the near future, I suspect), I need to go out there every weekend and remind myself how and why I became a witch in the first place.

New Year, New You - Prompt, "Maps"

"..the cities of the interior are vast and do not lie on any map." - J. Winterson, "The Passion"

It's time for the woods.

Never mind the fridge. Never mind the toilet. Never mind the laundry, the cooking and cleaning and all the other things that need to be done. I'm going off to the woods on Sunday to go sit and be quiet for a while. If anyone wants to come with me, they're welcome, but they'll be given to understand that there will be silence for a little while - phones off, no conversation, no explanations. I need to walk quietly, sit silently, hopefully up in a tree.

I grew up in the woods in upstate New York, and I have never really gotten used to living where I can't walk out the back door an be surrounded by trees. I wasn't made to be surrounded by all the unnatural sounds of modern life, at least not without frequent retreats to places where all I hear is birdsong, the wind in the trees, and wild animals doing what they do. And it's been far too long since I went back to one of the main things that sustains and renews my spirit.

"I can see night in the daytime/into the woods/I quietly go..." - The Call, "Into The Woods"

Weather Report

Sky: overcast.

Temperature: cool, with chickadees and tufted titmice.

Sun: supposedly appearing later on.

Evening forecast: witchery and cauliflower-potato soup.

Samhain eve is coming soon...*

Last night, Husband #1 and I were out in the backyard, and noticed a little bat swooping over our swimming pool. We were very happy to see the little critter making a dent in our insect population, and when we realized that s/he'd brought a few friends - there was a cloud of bats over our house, swooping and skimming the roof and the patio umbrella and our heads - we were positively delighted.

The half-moon was up, and the little bats were silhouetted against it from time-to-time as they fluttered around. This is when we realized that the bats were over our house, and didn't seem to be anywhere else.

There's probably a reasonable, rational explanation, but really? The bats were only over the witches' house?

I love my weird-ass life.


*I have a tendency to re-write Christmas songs for Samhain. When the holiday gets closer, I'll post "Samhain Wonderland".